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Then It Begins To Resolve

I never do very good by making New Year’s resolutions, but as I get older, I have gotten more focused on setting specific goals.   I feel I accomplished a lot in 2011 - I went to NYC for the first time, I went to New Orleans (ok, let's forget that), I moved into a new house, I published my first novel - two of those are from a lifetime goal list, so 2011 wasn't too shabby.  My only real goal for 2012 is to make 2011 the rule, and not the exception.  That being said, I have a few small goals I will tend to in 2012: Publish my collection of short fiction (Winter 2012) Complete and publish my next novel (Fall 2012) Start work - and complete a first draft?- on the Elizabeth sequel (2013) Go back to NYC Make that return trip to Europe I have been planning for 10 years There's lots of other things I'd love to do, such as: Hold my breath until Community comes back on Stop caring so much about new Apple rumors Redirect frustration over the things I cannot chang...
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Mirror, Mirror

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Recently I bought a copy of a pretty well reviewed and promoted speculative fiction novel.  About two chapters in, the main character looks in a mirror and describes themself.  I literally closed the book and stopped reading.  The novel had other issues, but this put me right out of the story.  This technique - being generous here - occurs a lot in first person narratives, about as often as a story beginning with the main character waking up from a dream.  The mirror device is best avoided, but not necessarily because it's so overused - it's best avoided because simply put, it's so easy.  A character, especially a protagonist, should never be described; they should be imagined.
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The Book of Elizabeth

Commence the Peanuts Happy Dance: I've sold my first novel, The Book of Elizabeth , to Sean Wallace at Prime Books . It will appear in hardcover in early 2009. You can read more details here . I see there's also a little blurb at SFScope . The novel takes place in a world where none of our history - none of it - occured. No Roman Empire, no Reformation, no Berlin Wall. No Berlin. A new history has taken its place, except for one little problem: people from our history inexplicably find themselves swept into this alien one, people from all eras of history, poets and gladiators. Poets and queens. One of them is Queen Elizabeth I. As a girl, she hand copied passages of the Bible for her step-mother; now, Elizabeth writes out a copy of the entire book from memory, to keep her own sanity in this strange new world, a world where Moses never went to the mountain, and Jesus never to the cross. Elizabeth learns to cope, to embrace the virgin world; yet she can't avoid her ...
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